How to get professional looking photos from an iPhone

Written By Carrie-Ann Skinner | 16 February 2018

Follow this professional photographer's tips for capturing great photos on an iPhone X.

Ditching your compact camera for your smartphone is the norm these days. The cameras on smartphones have come on leaps and bounds and by utilising some of the great features, it's possible to get photos that will make your friends and family exclaim, 'Did a professional take that?'.

We caught up with Patrick Gosling, a professional photographer who’s been using an Apple iPhone X alongside his DSLR to take photos.

'There were so many things I thought I couldn't do with a smartphone camera, but I quickly discovered I was actually able to do them', he said.

He let us into four features he uses (and you should too!) when taking pictures on an iPhone.

Capturing motion
Photographing a moving subject can be difficult especially if you want to demonstrate the motion too. However there a couple of tricks you can use this to capture spinning wheels, records turning on a turntable and other types of motion.

Start by using the autofocus lock. To do this, just press and hold the section of the shot you want in focus. AE/AF lock will be displayed in yellow at the top of the screen. Now you can move the camera to follow a moving subject and get the appearance of motion. To ensure you get the perfect shot when something or someone is moving use Burst mode. This will take several shots at one time.​

An image we took on an iPhone X of a moving McLaren 570 Spider using Patrick's tips

Alternatively, Live Photos (which can be found on all iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches running iOS11) takes a short video clip when you press the shutter button and can be a handy way to capture motion. To take a picture using Live Photo, simply press the icon that looks like a number of circles within each other. The word LIVE and a yellow version of the icon indicate this has been switched on. Now capture your image as usual. Head to the photos app and find your photo, then swipe up from the Live Photo and from the options displayed select Long Exposure. This is ideal for capturing everything from a record deck turning, a lightning storm and even fireworks.

Portrait mode
The handiest feature on the iPhone X (and also on the iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone 8 Plus) is Portrait Mode. This ensures a subject remains in focus while the background is blurred, making them really stand out. The effect, which is more commonly achieved with a DSLR, is possible thanks to the dual rear lenses. To switch Portrait mode on, open the camera app and swipe left at the bottom of the screen until Portrait is displayed in yellow. Swipe left through the different lighting effects (slightly above the Portrait icon) to choose from different lighting effects such as natural, studio and even stage, which fades the background to black.

Adjust exposure
The iPhone’s camera automatically sets the exposure of the photo for you based on the lighting conditions. However, if you think this is too dark or too light, you can adjust this easily and this works on all iPhone cameras. Tap the screen to bring the autofocus box up and use the slider with a sun icon which appears to the right of the box to make the image lighter or darker.